Robert J. Sawyer

What Would It Be Like to Live Forever?

 

Ever since the days of the ancient Egyptians, who constructed their sturdy pyramids to last for eternity, human beings have been preoccupied with the means for assuring everlasting life. How do we become immortal? And how would our relationship to the world change if we did? WIE’s Tom Huston talks about these and other perennial speculations with award-winning science fiction writer Robert J. Sawyer. Once the fictions of a curious mind, the possibilities for prolonging life indefinitely—or at least for a couple of hundred years—are rapidly becoming very real choices we may all be making. Do we want to trade in our fragile yet familiar bodies for the permanency of silicon hardware? Can we design a reality better than the one we currently inhabit? Sawyer has been pondering these and other eventualities created by nanotechnology and developing technologies for more than twenty-five years of his prolific career. Listen as Sawyer describes the many practical and moral consequences of living forever—issues that fueled the creative mind of this master storyteller but which we now all soon will face as a future perhaps stranger than fiction.

more about:

Robert J. Sawyer
bio & resources
 

Interviewed by:

Tom Huston

 

Recorded on: 3/20/2005

Topics:

Science of Consciousness
Futurism
Ethics and Morality

 

What Would It Be Like to Live Forever?

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